Kansas and Missouri Position Themselves for Sports Betting in 2019

by Rick Rockwell
on July 9, 2018

8

Minute Read

With many states on the East Coast already rolling out their sports betting platforms, following the Supreme Court’s overturning of PASPA, both Kansas and Missouri are exploring these platforms and all other options in regards to legalizing sports betting in their states. Unfortunately, the May 14th SCOTUS ruling came a little too late for each state’s legislature, but there are encouraging signs of hope for legalized sports betting in 2019. In fact, the groundwork that each state’s legislature is laying down in 2019, positions them for a very promising 2019.

According to a report by the Kansas City Star, both Kansas and Missouri legislators are going to for potential sports betting models. This fact finding mission is being done with the hopes that each legislature can be ready to move on sports betting once they reconvene in January 2019.

Kansas Sports Betting

Kansas has seen a few proposed sports betting bills that created quite a stir within state legislature and with the state’s casinos. For starters, the big point of contention was over an integrity fee for the leagues. All of the casinos united to oppose any kind of integrity fee, citing that Nevada doesn’t have integrity fees and they’re the gold standard for sports betting.

State legislators recognize the importance of potential sports betting revenues within the state. It’s why they’re so eager to figure out what other states are doing and how they can best emulate a sports betting framework in Kansas.

Sports betting proponents are hoping to come up with a sensible sports betting framework and then have it submitted for review once the State Legislature reconvenes in January. From there, if all goes well, Kansas could see a sports betting bill passed and in effect by July 1st. That would give the state the entire summer of 2019 to iron out the kinks and be ready to capitalize on the football season, which is the most lucrative time of the year for sports betting.

Missouri Sports Betting

Like its sister state of Kansas, Missouri’s State Legislature won’t reconvene until January 2019. However, unlike Kansas, Missouri seemed to be a bit ahead in terms of potential sports betting models. In April, the state had 3 different bills under review. None of them passed, but there was some credible potential within these bills. However, some tweaking would need to be done before any bill gains approval.

Also like Kansas, Missouri casinos adamantly opposed any integrity fee, which was one aspect of Plocher’s bill. In addition to the integrity fee, there has been a great deal of debate over how much to tax sports betting revenue.

Moving Forward

It’s a good bet that we’ll continue to hear new developments about each state’s quest to create the ideal sports betting framework especially as they see how well other states are doing like Delaware and New Jersey. I strongly believe that Kansas and Missouri will forgo any integrity fees due to the staunch opposition from the casinos. Additionally, I expect that these states will tax on the revenue and not the handle. If I had to guess, I would predict a tax rate of 8% to 12%.